Lessons - The Woman Who Made "Lazy Girl Jobs" Go Viral and Now Makes More Than Her Old Boss | Gabrielle Judge - Founder of Ms. Anti Work & TEDx Speaker

In this lessons episode, discover why redefining success at work starts with reclaiming control over time, energy, and priorities. Understand the difference between healthy ambition and unnecessary overwork. Explore how to set boundaries without sacrificing growth and uncover practical ways to build a career aligned with long-term fulfillment rather than external expectations. Your perception of work was this is like the one thing that pre concussion was this was the one thing that I can control in my life. Yes. This is the one thing that the input equals the output. And if I put more in, I'll get more out of it. And this is like the career path. So concussion happens post concussion. The creator journey is wild and and like it's manic at times. And it's almost like because we're both on it and it feels like there's like zero control. So, yeah, very much like seriously, though. So when you need and crave that control, it's not like you had a 30 year career and then you're like, wake up one day and you're like, oh, my God, like my life's almost half over, whatever. So how do you find control and comfort in creative process and thought when your life was so regimented? I like that. I think. Something that was really frustrating for me when I was at that job was that I felt like the job couldn't keep up with the ideas or the things that I wanted to do. And so I found a lot of freedom and confidence in content creation because the cool, well, it's cool and it's not so cool sometimes that we wear so many hats, right? It's like we're like the brand person, the CEO, like... The content, like there's just so much behind content creation, especially in the beginning when you don't have resources to really find those teams for yourself that that was really comforting for me because it was like, OK, well, if I do this full time by myself, I can at least control the output again in a different way. um and I wasn't getting as many no's I hated getting no's in corporate America where it was like um yeah you can do this eventually or like no you're not going to get this right now eventually like I just didn't like that feeling it made me feel like a lot of financial scarcity a lot of um I felt very limited and so I just I don't know I felt more empowered in this like delusional content creation space yeah It's so wild to me that you felt safer in a content creation space than like the salaried W-2'd, nine to five, you actually have a paycheck job. Yeah. That's like a 180 from what most people would consider to be the rational safe choice. Well, it took me a while to like make the full transition. So it was like the concussion happened and then I got my lazy girl job. That was like where my mindset and my ethos really started to happen was like two years ago. But I didn't have this around like quiet quitting phenomena. Yeah. Yeah, it was like the summer of 2021. So it was like the big, great resignation time. Yeah, so it was super easy. Like if you had a heartbeat and resume, you could just jump ship to like a great tech company, which was awesome. And I'm really grateful for that experience, but it was like, I wanted to prioritize like, still having the stability of having a W9 and having, you know, like a paycheck and things like that. But I wanted to really try out this content creation stuff. And so it probably took me, I don't know, like a year and a half to make the full transition to full time content creation. But it was definitely the goal since the concussion. So I want to super clearly articulate what lazy girl job is because that'll sort of set the frame for everything else we're talking about. So a couple of thoughts. I haven't worked in a position like that in a while where I've worked under it because I've worked in startups. So it's especially in like an executive role. It's very hard to take like a lazy mentality when like – 25 things daily depend on you like it's very much noticed but in a larger corporation i could totally see how that works but the concept is not quiet quitting concept of quiet quitting is very different in my opinion where it's like you're already checked out of your job and you're looking and you're applying for the next one whereas lazy girl job is that the best way to describe it is just you're doing the job that's like written on your resume but you're doing is it bare minimum or is it Is it just what's expected? Because I also feel like this came from, again, I'm removed from that type of rule. But I feel like this came from the fact that there was like scope creep in job descriptions. Yeah. Like to a significant degree. And I don't know if that was really present when I was working. So I feel like... When I'm working a nine to five and I'm doing the job, especially in like a sales role, for example, I hit my numbers. That's what I'm responsible for. There's there's no scope creep. It's not like I'm doing engineering on the side or I'm not doing other things. I'm just doing my job. So you feel like there's significant scope creep in work. And then it's like lazy girl is actually not lazy. It's actually bringing it back to baseline as to like this is what you're actually getting paid to do. Is that a fair answer? That's a great way to put it. I always want to say the bare minimum, but I feel like that creates the story of like not doing your job. But I really just mean what you're saying, the opposite of scope creep. So it's like focusing on the job responsibilities and eliminating the unnecessary work that tends to usually happen in corporate America. And just a quick thought experiment. Why would this happen post-COVID? Why did this scope creep happen? Like, give a very tangible example. I'm sure people reach out to you all the time now with, like, bullshit their company asks them to do that. It's totally not things they should be doing. Because it seems to be a phenomenon that's affecting everybody. I don't know if it has to do with working from home, people... Don't have the same emotional attachment. So they're seen as like just, just quote, air quotes, just employees as opposed to like real people. Like you miss that in person. You know, I can I can see you in the office. I want to treat you with respect. And like all of a sudden I'm just treating you like a like a peon, whatever it is. I have no idea why it happened, but it seems to be super prevalent. Employers, I don't think, ever changed in this whole pandemic era. I think employees woke up to a different way of working because typically we weren't able to remote work. That was usually more reserved for, I don't want to say like it's a bureaucratic system, but higher level positions could remote work. But that was more of a case by case basis, but it became normalized. So what I saw actually happen was employees woke up to the freedom and having autonomy around their work schedule. So when the workplace tried to transition back into, you know, the normal before the pandemic, they're trying to use all these levers that don't work anymore. So there's that a lot. Also... It's very easy now to play the game of, oh, well, we don't have races available right now. But when we do, we want to put in a good word for you. So do this work now. Like that's a huge, huge argument. Like they're dangling a carrot. Yeah. Okay. But then it's like they could dangle that carrot forever because there's an argument to be made. Totally. The counter argument is, okay, if I was like a hiring manager or a leader in an organization, like I would promote the person that goes the extra mile. Yeah. So I think this whole concept, you have to start sort of like figuring out what your personal North Star is too. Yes. Yes. So I really love what you just said right there because I feel the exact same way. So the reason that I'm so... jarring with my messaging is because I'm combating like another extreme side. I'm trying to get people in the equilibrium. So when I sit there and say like, don't do unnecessary work, I'm trying to bring back the people that are like getting the carrot dangled for way too long. I'm trying to get them back in the median. The median is what you're saying. So I still am okay with overachieving. I still encourage that in people. It's just it has to come from within and you make your bed with it. So it cannot be this whole, oh, my boss wants me to do this. My coworkers will accept me more if I do this project. And then you do it and you resent everyone and everything because you didn't want to do it to begin with. So it's either like you opt into the game and play it really well and, you know, make your bed with that or. If you're not a careerist, you're not necessarily into this stuff, then here's an option too. But I totally agree with that too. I think also as an employer today, because I actually do have staff members, if I'm actually going to – If I'm going to employ someone that I want to push their performance, it's always going to be a commission based role. And I know that that's not always achievable in these bigger corporate structures. Right. These late stage tech companies, they can't make like every single position a commission based job. And I understand that. They can do performance based, though. Right. I know I know executives, again, Canadian. So the Canadian telco, big one, it's Rogers and they're like a Verizon, AT&T, whatever kind of company. Yeah. And every executive has performance tied to company performance and stock performance and tied to organized like organizational unit performance, too. Like that's part of your year end bonus. So, yeah, it's not like commission per se, but it's tied to what your group does, what your own KPIs and if you like sort of achieve and, you know, whatnot. But then there's also there's always some sort of incentive bonus that incentivize people to go the extra mile. Is that how would you do that with like a project manager? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's certain roles where I'm like, they're just as important, but it's hard to monetize their output. It is because there's only so much you can get out of that person. And it could actually be a negative effect if you incentivize them to the degree where they have to move faster because either it's going to be like a sweatshop style environment or they're going to try and mask shitty work to move quicker. Okay. So I see what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So in a situation like that, then what do you do? I don't know. That's why I make so much content. Figure it out. Right? I don't know. That's the cool and exciting thing is like these are the mind games or like it's almost like a, I don't know, like a brainstorming session that I like to do almost with myself because I really try to reality check myself when I do make content. And it's like, I don't know, like that it's the craziest part when I do speak to a lot of other friends that, you know. manage smaller teams of people, 10 to 30 people. It's like, they're so focused on that too right now, like how to create bonus structures with a job like a project manager where like risk assessment is super important and like they shouldn't be pushed all the time. So it's just, yeah, it's a super interesting concept. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.